MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Welcome to the Big 12 opener, where No. 8 West Virginia hosts an Iowa State team that is already looking to make up some ground after falling to Kansas State, 74-65, on Tuesday. In his Zoom meeting with the media, WVU head coach Bob Huggins was quick to point out that in all four Big 12 games played thus far, the road team has come out on top, a product of there being no true home court advantage with little or no fans being allowed in attendance due to COVID-19 restrictions.
That will be the case tonight, too, as the WVU Coliseum will have only a limited gathering of immediate family members in attendance.
Rather than recap the Big 12 action, we want to go in a slightly different direction. Huggins raised a hot topic of discussion about the future of college basketball after the NCAA announced it was going to allow a blanket waiver for all transfers this year to become immediately eligible, as long as the athlete met a certain set of criteria. The NCAA is also studying its rules and could allow all Division I athletes to transfer once without having to sit out a season in the years to come.
In the past, Huggins has stated opposition to the ruling, once calling it one of the biggest mistakes the NCAA could ever make.
“We just passed immediate eligibility and it’s going to be a circus,” Huggins said. “It’s kind of like how free agency turned me off on baseball. Watching the Pirates with Willie Stargell and Roberto Clemente as a little kid, if free agency would have happened during that time, who knows how many of those guys we would have lost? You grow up cheering for a team or for certain players on the team, and, all of a sudden, they’re gone. Then they’re replaced by somebody from another team. I think it’s horrible. I don’t think it’s good for the kids and certainly not good for the fans and it’s rough on the schools.”
Allowing immediate eligibility, Huggins once joked, would open up to teams recruiting players while in the handshake line following each game. That might be an exaggeration, but only a slight one at a time when the transfer numbers were already extraordinary before athletes were permitted a blanket waiver. You’ve heard this stat before, but it’s worth repeating. According to NCAA figures from a couple of years ago, 40% off all college freshmen men’s hoops players are not with the team they originally signed with by the time they are juniors.
Under former head coach Fred Hoiberg and now under Steve Prohm, Iowa State has traditionally been a program that signs multiple Division I transfers and have turned those transfer numbers into success. The Cyclones (1-3, 0-1 Big 12) will start three players today who did not begin their careers at Iowa State, including shooting guard Jalen Coleman-Lands, who is with his third college team in six years.
“Iowa State is just a little bit ahead of the rest of us,” Huggins said. “It’s going to happen to all of us.”
Huggins knows full well that he has benefited from signing a transfer. The Mountaineers (6-1) got forward Gabe Osabuohien last season from Arkansas and then sought and received a waiver for immediate eligibility from the NCAA. It’s hard to say WVU has not benefited from Osabouhien’s presence on the court. Juwan Staten, who is now a member of the Mountaineers’ coaching staff as a graduate manager, was once a transfer from Dayton. No one can argue that WVU didn’t benefit from having Staten on the roster.
Here’s the thing, though: In 14 years, Huggins has signed just four Division I transfers (Staten, Osabuohien, Aaric Murray and Matt Humphrey). Iowa State has four on its roster this season.
Would Huggins consider going more transfer-heavy in the future?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wouldn’t know until we really got into it. We’ve got a great bunch of guys right now and we just need to concentrate on these guys.”
Huggins brought up another potential issue that could hit WVU, as well as a number of other schools located in smaller college towns, in terms of the NCAA looking into allowing athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness (NIL). The state of California has already passed a law allowing athletes in that state to benefit off NIL, despite NCAA rules. It’s very possible the NCAA will follow suit and try to come up with some kind of uniform rule that will permit athletes to do the same.
The problem, as Huggins sees it: “In this name and likeness thing, so what if someone comes in and says to one of our guys who is playing really well, ‘Hey, how much are you getting from this name and likeness deal from West Virginia? Oh, we could give three times as much.’ What are they going to do? The same thing you would do, you’d leave. I don’t know how to stop that.”
A school with a mostly rural population like WVU would have a difficult time competing on the recruiting circuit against schools such as UCLA, St. John’s or even against rival Pitt, because of what those schools may be able to offer in NIL that WVU could not.
“Let’s be honest, we’re not in a metropolitan area where we have the wherewithal to make (NIL) big,” Huggins said. “We don’t have that. I was at Cincinnati for all of those years. If we had name and likeness then, we could have got some stuff done at Cincinnati. Now, with Mylan (Pharmaceuticals) shutting down, and to me, it looks like a lot of downtown is not going to reopen. What do we have to offer in the name and likeness game?”
Huggins’ biggest fear would be in signing an under-recruited player, like he did with Jevon Carter, and then having a bigger school come in and steal him away once that player develops into a solid contributor.
“How long do you keep them, or can you keep them?” Huggins said. “Basically, you’d be looking at a lot of one-and-dones. I guess I have to go have a John Calipari seminar.”
As for my own two cents on the subjects, I think athletes gaining the rights to use their NIL is a good thing. I believe they’ve earned it. Say a local car dealership wanted to hire Derek Culver to be its spokesman, the WVU forward should be able to take advantage of the popularity he’s built through his own hard work.
I do recognize that some schools would be able to offer more in the way of compensation or options and that would create an unfair playing field in recruiting, but let’s be honest, there already is an unfair playing field in recruiting. If a high school kid gets two scholarship offers and one is from Ball State and the other is from Ohio State, well, you get the picture.
As for just letting everyone transfer without penalty, again, a college kid should have that right. That’s not something you should try to stop. What the NCAA could do, though, is legislate the number of transfers a school can accept in any one season or over a two- or three-year period. The NCAA can’t stop a kid from leaving a school, but it can certainly tell its member schools how many they can take in.
Some food for thought and it’s always interesting to hear Huggins speak on hot topics, because he generally has good things to say. For now, we get back to the opening of the Big 12 season. Here’s what you need to know:
TV: ESPNU (Comcast 174, HD 853; DirecTV 208; DISH 148) for the 9 p.m. tip-off. BETTING LINE: WVU is favored by 15 points.
PROJECTED STARTING LINEUPS
WEST VIRGINIA (6-1)
F–Derek Culver, 6-10, jr., 13.9 ppg, 10.7 rpg
F–Oscar Tshiebwe, 6-9, soph., 8.3 ppg, 7.6 rpg
F–Emmitt Matthews Jr., 6-7, jr., 7.1 ppg, 3.9 rpg
G–Deuce McBride, 6-2, soph., 14.6 ppg, 4.6 apg
G–Sean McNeil, 6-3, jr., 11.1 ppg, 2.4 rpg
IOWA STATE (1-3)
F–Solomon Young, 6-8, sr., 10.0 ppg, 4.3 rpg
F–Javon Johnson, 6-6, jr., 11.3 ppg, 3.8 rpg
G–Darlinstone Dubar, 6-6 fr., 4.0 ppg, 4.3 rpg
G–Rasir Bolton, 6-3, jr., 15.8 ppg, 6.0 apg
G–Jalen Coleman-Lands, 6-4, sr., 13.5 ppg, 3.8 rpg
PREDICTION TIME
This is one game where I think Las Vegas couldn’t make the point spread high enough, because Iowa State has traditionally been a program that relies on outscoring opponents rather than playing solid defense. Knowing Big 12 home teams are 0-4 straight up in conference play so far should be a red flag, but I think West Virginia’s defense makes an impact in this game.
I like WVU to win and cover, 83-65.
Justin’s season picks against the spread: 2-3-1.
